


Even When We're Old and Grey

by Rouge_Angle



Category: Naruto
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Gen, M/M, Old Married Couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 10:35:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13246410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rouge_Angle/pseuds/Rouge_Angle
Summary: They've grown old in the village that is home. {Happy AU-verse where Madara never left}





	Even When We're Old and Grey

**Author's Note:**

> Found this languishing in my w.i.p folder from years ago and decided to post it. There isn't really a plot. Just fluffiness.

Madara has the dream again. It’s an old dream now, familiar like the thumb-worn pages of a favourite book, and more vivid than if he’d lived it. It’s a dream of racing blood and crackling power – not mere battle, but a dream of a clash so cataclysmic it would echo across the ages.

It is a dream of his own death.

He starts awake, a sheen of cold sweat on his skin, silvery cobwebs of hair sticking to his face and neck. He swipes them away and whimsically presses a hand to his chest, despite knowing that he will find nothing but his heartbeat beneath layers of cotton _nemaki_ and wasted flesh. Sighing, Madara rolls his head to one side to look at the bed’s other occupant. If time has ravaged him, then it has been artfully chipping away at Hashirama. The face on the Hokage Mountain is weathered but eternally youthful; the one lying with a cheek half-squashed into the pillow is creased with long laughter lines and sagging slightly. His lover’s hair is the colour of iron, streaked frequently with its original black years after Madara’s last hair had turned. Hashirama sleeps on, far too used to Madara to wake up at every little twitch. He does not stir even when Madara lays a hand lightly over his waist, feeling the steady rise and fall of his breath.

He’s still here. They’re both still here. He’s glad of that, even if age is less dignified than dying in battle. Being old was never something he planned on, but then, neither was spending the past fifty-six years living with the man whom he’d once strived day in and day out to murder. It’s funny how these things turn out.

Madara remains where he is, until his internal clock informs him that it’s time to get up, even if the sky outside has yet to brighten. Reluctantly, he shifts closer to his snoozing partner and presses his face against the crook of his neck. “Hashirama.”

The response comes a few drawn-out seconds later. “Ngh…no. It’s still dark outside.”

Madara doesn’t even bother to roll his eyes at this weak display of theatrics. “You promised the children you’d show them the Mokuton,” he reminds him.

Hashirama snakes an arm around his shoulders, pressing him closer. “The children can see it at a more respectable hour. I won’t be any good to them without my beauty sleep.”

“You’re thirty years too late to be concerned about that,” Madara tells him. (This isn’t really true, if you ask him. Which no one does. And even if they did, he wouldn’t answer.) He blows against Hashirama’s neck, feels him shiver convulsively at the ticklish feeling.

“If I get up, will you make me tea?”

“You can make your own damn tea. But I might make mine, and drink it with you. Come on,” he urges, pressing a kiss to the corner of Hashirama’s mouth. “Get up you lazy old man.”

 “This from the mean old geezer who won’t even make me tea,” Hashirama mutters, not very quietly, and nudges Madara off him, slowly sitting up and stretching the stiffness from his limbs.

The pair of them stow their futons in the wall cupboards before shuffling into the other room. Theirs is a small house, unchanged from the traditional style in which Hashirama had grown it, decades ago. Most houses in Konoha have modernised, but not them. Madara prefers it this way; it’s simpler. Though there is much to be said in praise of showers and the television isn’t _all_ drivel, he thinks as places the teapot onto the hearth and makes them both a cup of tea, forgetting that he’d said he wouldn’t.

The kids waiting at the academy are four years old and have just finished their morning _kata_ , round cheeks flushed with exertion after running laps and guiding their uncoordinated bodies through simple forms. He and Hashirama have tried, over the years, to raise the age limit of entry to the academy without success, though they retain enough political power that they were able to put a stop to the ridiculous plan to promote Hatake Sakumo’s son.

“He is a _child_ ,” Hashirama had practically snarled, every object not nailed down in Hiruzen’s office trembling with the force of his anger. The ANBU lurking outside tensed and the Hokage himself looked nervous despite Hashirama’s advanced age. Madara had merely smiled. “I don’t care about tensions with other nations and the need to build up Konoha’s fighting force. Be more diplomatic! Don’t make the children suffer. That is not what we built this village for.”

“It is nonsense to promote someone with such short limbs,” Madara agreed, privately enjoying Hiruzen’s discomfort. He had not approved of his field promotion, or of the way he allowed Shimura Danzō far too much free rein. “Let him be.”

The boy’s silver head stands out from the crowd, even as older students join them. He stands slightly apart. Madara recognises some of the students as the children and grandchildren (and great-grandchildren) of people he knows. Among the crowd are several children from his own clan, including one in particular that beams at the sight of them and comes running over. _“Jii-chan!”_

He comes barrelling over and Madara wards off the attempted hug with his cane before Obito can knock him off his feet. It would not be the first time. “Hello little brat,” he greets, ruffling the boy’s hair fondly. “Hashirama’s going to build you a new tree house.” There has always been a tree house at the academy, but time and rain gradually rot them down and every decade or so there is a need for a replacement.

“I’ve been trying to climb trees with chakra like you showed me, but I fell on my head,” Obito admits, pouting at the memory. “Rin yelled at me. She called me stupid.”

“That’s because she cares,” Madara informs him, leaving Obito to glance over his shoulder at the girl in question in wide-eyed wonderment. He doesn't have many friends. It makes Madara want to go and track down all the boy’s near age-mates and give them a smack round the ears. “Go on now,” he says, nudging him back to his class mates.

“He’s adorable,” Hashirama says once the boy is out of earshot. “The way he’s adopted you. You get to be a grandpa again.” For obvious reasons, they’ve never had children of their own, though this never seemed to mean much to Tsunade.

Madara doesn’t deny it. Hashirama had once spoken to him of coming to consider the village like a family. The speech had been poorly-timed, but years later it’s something that has come at least half true. As Hashirama slowly kneels down and clasps his hands a cherry tree blooms from the bare earth, branches unfurling and weaving around a house among the leaves, Madara reflects that though he’s come to love this place on his own terms, it only became his home when Hashirama made it so.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave a comment if you liked this tooth-rotting fluff. :-)


End file.
